Turn 17 of 26

Open the door to see Ruth wearing a white button down, brown sweater vest with a name tag that says Ruth on the breast, an orange tiered skirt down her ankles and gray loafers. Her hair is in some high braided pigtails. You and Ruth leave the dorm and head to the dentist appointment to get your braces wired permanently. But you see all other 28 girls from the dorm and class in there.

You open the door, and Ruth is there in a white button-down under a brown sweater vest, RUTH stitched on the breast, an orange tiered skirt to her ankles, gray loafers, hair in high braided pigtails.

"Ready?" she lisps, and you nod, and your voice — warm, installed, easy — answers before you can stop it.

"Ready, Ruthie."

The word comes out in Ruth's own nicknaming tone, hers and not yours, and she glows like you've handed her a present. You walk out together through the quiet honors corridor, past girls in matching cardigans eating toast in the common room, and off campus down a side street you somehow already know the way to.

The dentist's office is small and bright, with fish tanks and a rack of magazines, and when you step inside you stop. The waiting room is full. All of them. Twenty-eight girls from the class — heavyset, pale, freckled, pigtails high and low, taped glasses flashing under the fluorescent lights, every cardigan with a different first name stitched to the breast. MEGAN. PRIYA. DANIELLE. They fill every chair and spill along the walls, comparing rubber bands, giggling and snorting, and every single one of them turns when the bell over the door rings and says, in a warm lisping chorus:

"Hi, Edith!"

Your stomach drops — a quick cold elevator-drop under all the warmth. Edith. Not a tailor's mistake, then. They know the name. They've all been waiting with the name ready for you, and your body answers it anyway: a smile, a raised hand, a little wave with fingers that feel like someone else's.

"Hi," you lisp back, and your voice doesn't stumble over which name to use. It knows.

A dental assistant in pink scrubs opens the inner door with a clipboard.

"Edith Kessler? We're ready for you — permanent wiring today, Dr. Sandoval's been looking forward to this one." She says it like a graduation. Ruth squeezes your soft arm and steers you forward through the crowd of girls, who part for you giggling, some patting your shoulder, one whispering "you'll loooove the wireth" — and you're walking toward the chair, mouth already opening for the appointment you've apparently had scheduled your whole life, and somewhere far underneath, the small cold knocking thing is hammering now.